


don't blame me (love made me crazy)

by lesmiserablol



Series: Zukka Week 2021 [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ambassador Zuko (Avatar), Kissing, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-War, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 10:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30104553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesmiserablol/pseuds/lesmiserablol
Summary: “Stop that.”“Stop what?” he asks.“Stop biting your lip, it’s distracting,” Sokka all but whines.Zuko grins. “How about you stop me yourself?”“You bastard,” Sokka sighs. “You know how badly I want to drag you out of here right now and do exactly that.”“Don’t do it, Sokka,” Zuko says. “This is your sister’s wedding, we agreed to not steal any of the attention with our new relationship.”
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Zukka Week 2021 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2211507
Comments: 36
Kudos: 272





	don't blame me (love made me crazy)

**Author's Note:**

> Day four of Zukka week, this is for the prompt of secretly dating! <3

“Ambassador Zuko.”

Zuko looks away from the Earth Kingdom Ambassador with whom he had been chatting politely to see Sokka approaching from a few feet away, and damn it, the sight of him never fails to fill Zuko’s stomach with a hundred fireflies. He didn't see much of Sokka before or during the wedding ceremony, he was busy with his duties as brother of the bride and best friend of the groom. Zuko got a quick glance of him, but seeing him now, his attention completely focused on Zuko...

The only reason his jaw doesn’t drop right then and there is because of the years of practice he has had of keeping his cool around Sokka. 

Instead, he swallows hard, holding tightly to the wine glass in his hand and somehow managing to neither shatter nor melt it in his hands. Wait, can he melt glass with his firebending? He’s never tried, he’s willing to bet it would take a lot of heat, but the way he feels under Sokka’s gaze right now leaves no doubt in his mind that he could summon enough heat to melt one glass or one thousand glasses.

Because damn, Sokka always looks nice, but he especially cleaned up good today. 

His hair is up in a perfect wolftail, braids and beads woven into the strands. He has a smile on his face as Zuko barely registers him greeting the other Ambassador. He looks so _happy_ , and Zuko is willing to bet that he cried during the ceremony, but now the happy tears are replaced with a look of pure joy. He is wearing his best formal robes, drawing attention his broad shoulders, and the dark blue shimmers under the light of the lanterns and brings out the blue of his eyes. 

_ “What’s your favorite color?” Sokka asked, desperate to fill the silence in the air balloon with something,  _ anything _ other than the fact that they were on their way to a high security Fire Nation prison.  _

_ Zuko had been so thrown off that he just stared at the sky around them in silence, thinking. What was his favorite color? No one had ever asked him that before. He’d never really thought about it, either.  _

_ “Hmm, let me guess,” Sokka continued. “Red?” _

_ Zuko scowled, and Sokka laughed. Red just reminded him of his childhood, of blood, of fire. It was too harsh a color.  _

_ “Green?” _

_ Zuko thought about it, then shook his head. “No.” _

_ “Purple? Because you’re royalty?” _

_ “Not purple.” _

_ “Pink?” _

_ Zuko raised his eyebrow.  _

_ “Uh,” Sokka paused, then followed Zuko’s line of sight to where he was back to staring at the sky. “Oh! It’s blue, isn’t it?” _

_ Zuko redirected his gaze to Sokka to tell him to give up, but the words died in his throat. Sokka was watching him with bright eyes, with  _ blue _ eyes, and Zuko felt a strange sensation in his chest as he looked at him. How had he never noticed the color of his eyes, how it matched the tunic he wore, how it matched the whole sky around them?  _

_ No, matched wasn’t the right word. Despite how vast the sky was, it didn’t seem to be able to compare to the color in Sokka’s eyes.  _

_ Sokka was still watching him curiously, and Zuko felt his cheeks start to heat up. He added more flames to fuel the balloon to busy himself.  _

_ “Yeah,” he said, once he was finally able to find his voice. “It’s blue.” _

The silence is bordering on uncomfortable and perhaps not socially acceptable, and Zuko quickly clears his throat, his face feeling warm. He glances at the other Ambassador, but she is already smiling knowingly at the two of them. 

“I should go congratulate Avatar Aang and Master Katara,” she says. “Excuse me.”

Zuko gives her a smile as she walks away and Sokka holds out his hand.

“May I have this dance?” Sokka asks. 

Zuko glances around, but no one is really paying attention to them, and damn it if he doesn’t get tired of denying himself what he wants when it comes to Sokka, so he takes his hand and follows him to the dance floor amidst all the other couples dancing. 

“Do you like my robes?” Sokka asks. 

Zuko rolls his eyes at the self satisfied smirk on his face. “You know I do, asshole. If I had more to drink we would still be standing there with me openly gaping at you.”

Sokka laughs and Zuko can’t hold back the smile at his reaction. They’re keeping a respectable distance between them, all the appearance of two friends dancing at a wedding reception, and Zuko’s hands itch to pull Sokka close against his chest and hold him tightly. But he sets his jaw resolutely and continues to follow Sokka’s lead in the simple dance steps. 

“I don’t see the problem with that,” Sokka muses. 

“You’re impossible,” Zuko sighs, the smile giving away how he really feels. 

Sokka looks dazed for a moment, then glances away. “Do you think we’re being too obvious?”

Maybe, but despite all the conversations they had about this, Zuko is finding it much harder to care about appearances in practice than he did in theory. 

“I don’t think so,” he says, and it’s only partially a lie. “I don’t think either of us were ever really good at hiding how we felt, so this is nothing too far from normal.”

“And yet it took us this long to figure it out?” Sokka asks, looking exasperated. 

“I can’t speak for you, but in _my_ defense, I didn’t want my feelings for the son of the chief to get in the way of my ambassadorial duties. Imagine I acted on them only to get shipped back to Caldera for breaking some rule I didn’t know about?”

“Oh, so it was my fault?” Sokka asks, teasing. “In my defense, every time I wanted to do something about it you’d give me that smile and short circuit my brain completely.”

Zuko bites his lip and looks away, willing himself to not blush. 

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?” he asks. 

“Stop biting your lip, it’s distracting,” Sokka all but whines. 

Zuko grins. “How about you stop me yourself?” 

“You bastard,” Sokka sighs. “You know how badly I want to drag you out of here right now and do exactly that.”

“Don’t do it, Sokka,” Zuko says. “This is your sister’s wedding, we agreed to not steal any of the attention with our new relationship.”

It had sounded like such a great idea at the time. Two weeks was not a long time, they could keep this secret for two weeks. 

It started with Sokka explaining what the wedding for Aang and Katara would be like. It was the first wedding that Zuko would attend in the Southern Water Tribe, and while he was happy to help with the flurry of planning and organizing and decorating that went into the last few weeks leading up to the big day, he was still curious as to what would happen. So when he expressed this to Sokka, Sokka gave him a thorough run down, walking him through where they would have the reception but more importantly, where the actual ceremony would take place. 

Zuko can’t really remember who initiated the first kiss, because his memory is clouded with the hundred more that they shared during the rest of the night. All he knows is that one minute Sokka was talking about love and romance and commitment and the next, they couldn’t keep their hands (or their lips) off each other. 

But everyone, especially the people they cared the most to tell about their new relationship, was busy getting ready for the wedding of the century, so they agreed to keep it a secret and come clean once everything calmed down. 

Which seemed like a great idea, until Zuko realized that Sokka took it as a challenge. He flirted with him as much as he usually did, but now it drove Zuko crazier and Sokka knew how badly it made Zuko want to shut him up. It was maddening. This only encouraged Sokka more to act like a tease. Zuko wished he didn’t love it so much. 

And he made sure to show Sokka just how crazy it made him when he would sneak off to Sokka’s igloo every night, sneaking back out early the next morning. 

“But babe,” Sokka whines, dropping his voice so only Zuko can hear the term of endearment, and Zuko tries to not shiver. “The nerve you have showing up wearing all blue...you did that on purpose, you jerk. You have no idea what it makes me want to do to you.”

Zuko’s breath hitches, and he steps closer, just a bit. “Sokka.” He means for it to come out as a warning, but he sounds as desperate as he feels, and Sokka grins wickedly. 

He leans in to whisper into Zuko’s ear, and that’s _not fair_ , Sokka knows what he’s doing with his hot breath hitting the side of his neck. “Just five minutes alone, and I’ll behave for the rest of the night. No one will notice.” He leans closer so that his lips just barely graze Zuko’s neck, and Zuko’s fingers spasm where they are clutching Sokka’s hips for dear life.

“You’re the worst,” Zuko groans when Sokka pulls away.

“You don’t mean that,” Sokka says, and great, now he’s pouting, and Zuko can’t look away from his bottom lip as it sticks out.

“Five minutes,” he hisses, and Sokka grins triumphantly and then starts to walk away. Zuko barely stops himself from reaching out to grab his hand and let himself be dragged off, but instead he clenches his fists tightly and watches Sokka leave the room. He glances around, making sure that no one is watching, before he follows. 

He steps into the hall and looks around. In the distance he sees blue robes disappear and he follows them to another turn of the hallway. As soon as he steps into the new corridor, strong hands grab him by the front of his robes and push him against the wall.

“Sokka,” Zuko gasps, and Sokka shuts him up immediately with a desperate kiss. Zuko melts into it and kisses back before pulling away. “What are you doing? Anyone could see us.”

Sokka laughs. “I know, babe, but I couldn’t resist. Come on.”

He pulls Zuko into an empty room. Is it a closet? Zuko doesn’t have much time to think about it or observe his surroundings, because the next moment, Sokka again has his hands on Zuko and his lips on Zuko and everything else seems extremely insignificant in comparison.

* * *

“I’m pretty sure it’s been more than five minutes,” Zuko mumbles against Sokka’s lips.

Sokka makes a disappointed noise. Zuko’s pretty sure it’s been _at least_ ten minutes, but it’s hard to keep track of time or anything really when he’s with Sokka.

“Sokka,” Zuko says, although he himself is making no move to pull away. In fact, he realizes, he is the one pressing Sokka against the closed door, so maybe he should be the one to step back, but there’s just one problem: he doesn’t want to.

Sokka seems to read his mind, because he pulls his lips away just enough to break the contact. Zuko sighs, but before he can say anything else, Sokka’s lips are back on his neck, and this time Sokka isn’t just brushing his lips against the skin there.

“Sokka!” Zuko breathes. “You’re going to leave a mark, dumbass.”

“I know,” Sokka says, pulling away to smirk at Zuko. “They’re going to find out soon anyway, why not give them something to look at until then?”

“Former prince of the Fire Nation, current Ambassador to the Southern Water Tribe disappears from the most important wedding in decades only to return with swollen lips and a hickey on his neck,” Zuko says, pretending not to notice as Sokka switches their positions and presses him against the door. “If only my ancestors could see me now.”

“I thought that was the goal, to piss them off?” Sokka jokes, going back to his neck, then he freezes and looks back up. “I'm sorry, I should'v e asked. We can cover it up, I can stop now.”

Zuko swallows, and Sokka’s eyes follow the motion. “I mean,” he says, his voice a little airy. “I stopped caring what people think about me after I legalized gay marriage in the Fire Nation.”

“Is that a ‘please give me another hickey, Sokka’?” His boyfriend teases.

“If you don’t hurry up I’m going back to the—” Zuko’s words are choked off as Sokka goes for his neck again and he swears loudly. “Agni, Sokka, someone’s going to hear us!”

Sokka lets out an actual giggle. “So what?” he asks, smiling widely. “Let them hear. I want the whole world to know I’m kissing you.”

“Do you want the whole world to know you’re hiding in a room during your sister’s wedding reception?” Zuko asks pointedly as Sokka starts kissing down to his collarbone.

“Please, they’ll survive without us for a few more minutes,” Sokka says, his air ghosting Zuko’s skin, and he shivers. “If anything, they’ll be happy for me, they know how long I’ve—”

They both freeze as they hear footsteps, but the sound continues past the room where they are hiding. 

“Even when you kiss, you never know how to shut up,” Zuko teases. 

“I know a solution for that,” Sokka says, and Zuko rolls his eyes but leans back in to meet his lips again. His skin feels on fire, but in a pleasant way. Everything is warm, and every point of contact between him and Sokka is electric. It’s so distracting that he doesn’t realize the footsteps have returned, and his stomach swoops as the solid door behind him suddenly disappears and he falls onto the floor, Sokka falling with him and landing on top of him.

The wind is knocked out of his lungs, and for a moment he doesn’t move, the ceiling the only thing in his line of sight until Katara leans over, smirking. 

“We found them!” she calls over her shoulder, and Zuko sees Aang at her side, struggling to not laugh.

Zuko wants to die. He wants to press his hands to the ice below him and melt it until he is in the ocean and drowns and never has to face Katara or Aang ever again. Sokka seems to be thinking the same thing, groaning and hiding his face in Zuko’s chest.

And of course, that’s when they hear more footsteps and Zuko’s face turns red as he glances over to see Hakoda and Bato walking over.

“Well, well, well,” Hakoda starts, and Zuko wishes desperately that he were in Sokka’s position so that he could be the one hiding from his knowing smirk. 

Sokka seems to sense his panic, because he lifts his head to spare Zuko from taking the full force of the embarrassment. He blinks up at his dads, his sister, and his now brother-in-law.

“Oh hey guys,” he greets casually, and Zuko realizes how dark and swollen his lips are from kissing, and his hair is significantly less put together than it had been at the party, and he’s sure he doesn’t look much better. He hopes the hickies are out of sight from this angle, at the very least.

“Is it time for dessert yet?” Sokka adds when no one says anything, and Zuko moves his hands away from where he had gripped Sokka’s waist tightly as they fell, now covering his face in embarrassment.

“How stupid do you think we are?” Katara asks, and Zuko guess she crosses her arms across her chest. “We know you’ve been dating for this past month.”

“Only for the last two weeks!” Sokka shoots back hotly.

Katara snorts and Hakoda sounds amused when he says, “You two have been acting like a couple for much longer than that.”

Sokka must get tired of talking to his family from this compromising position, because he rolls off of Zuko and stands. Zuko uncovers his face to see Sokka offering a hand to help him up, and he takes it. It’s not any easier to have this conversation from this angle, but the steady hand in his refusing to let go makes it a little better.

Aang is smiling at him, which helps, but the knowing look on Bato’s face only makes him look away, embarrassed again. 

“We were going to tell you guys, but we wanted to wait until after the wedding. We didn’t want to distract anyone or, uh, steal the attention,” Zuko explains.

“So you thought the best way of doing that was to disappear together from our wedding reception?” Katara asks with a raised eyebrow, but she’s smiling.

Zuko exchanges a look with Sokka, and when Sokka’s eyes glance to his neck, Zuko knows the hickies are on full display. He tries not to sigh at that.

“Not our best idea,” he admits.

“But also not your worst. No, your worst was thinking you two idiots could be subtle enough to hide it from us all this time,” Katara says.

“Why didn’t you guys say anything?” Sokka asks.

“With all the stress of the wedding, it was nice to have a reliable source of entertainment,” Aang admits, and Sokka shoots him a glare.

“We’re glad you two finally figured things out, but we do want you to get back to the celebration,” Bato says.

“Sorry,” Sokka says. “We didn’t mean to disappear, we just got carried away.”

Zuko tries not to groan out loud but he feels his cheeks turning red again.

“Too much information,” Katara says, while Aang laughs. “Come on, lovebirds, think you two can keep your hands to yourself for the rest of the evening?”

“Mouths, yes. Hands, no,” Sokka grins widely, swinging their intertwined hands, and this time Zuko does groan out loud.

Fortunately, the others (including Sokka’s dads, thank the Spirits) just laugh, some rolling their eyes, and turn to lead the way back to the celebration.

Sokka keeps his promise: they keep their mouths to themselves, but he doesn’t let go of Zuko’s hand for the rest of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://bisexuallsokka.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
